Summary:
Mary-Louise and her son Timothy Lynch, Jr. were interviewed by Andree Hurst on October 25, 2022.
Mary-Louise and her husband Timothy John Lynch, Sr. built a house in Lafayette in 1953 and raised 7 children, one of whom is Tim. Her husband worked as a liquor wholesaler supplying local restaurants like Petar’s and the Cape Cod House. They were both active in community service. During this interview she talks about raising her family and shares family photos from the World War II era.
Oral History:
Andree Hurst: Why don’t we start by saying I am Andree Hurst of the Lafayette Historical Society talking with Mary-Louise Lynch on October 25, 2022. What year were you born? What was your birthday?
Mary-Louise Lynch: January 13, 1920.
AH: 1920, okay. And…
Timothy Lynch, Jr.: Just one second. Was it called Ocean Park, where you were born?
MLL: No.
TL: It’s no longer there. I thought it was called Ocean Park.
AH: That’s okay.
MLL: Yeah, I think you’re right.
TL: It’s now Long Beach.
AH: You’ve lived in Lafayette quite a long time?
MLL: Yes, we bought the property and built this house in…
TL: ’63.
MLL: 1963.
AH: 1963. And you had seven children, is that right?
MLL: Correct.
TL: But not when they built it. Only half are still here.
MLL: Yeah.
AH: Yeah. What are Some of your… are your parents from this area, California, as well?
MLL: My mother was from Fresno, California and my father was from Whitt, Texas.
AH: Texas. Did you have any brothers and sisters?
MLL: Yes, how many did I have? Four.
AH: Four. So you’ve been in this home since 1962. Has Lafayette changed a lot since you were younger?
MLL: Oh yes. Very much so.
TL: They lived in this area since 1950. Has Lafayette changed?
MLL: It’s changed a lot, yes. It was a little town, you know. It’s grown a lot.
AH: What are some of your favorite memories of when you were younger here?
MLL: I was always busy with the kids, that’s for sure.
AH: Did you get involved with the schools?
MLL: You had to when you had that many kids.
TL: They were all private schools, no public schools.
AH: Was Acalanes High School here when you arrived, or did that come later?
TL: That was the 1940’s.
AH: 1940’s? Okay. What sorts of things did you do for fun here?
MLL: Well, I was really busy that’s for sure, and my husband was in the liquor business, so we were involved with different restaurants and bars, so we did a lot of entertaining.
AH: Do you remember the restaurants, I think they called it Tunnel Strip, where they had all the different restaurants?
TL: There was Tunnel Road. What was along Tunnel Road? What was Ruth’s restaurant?
MLL: I’m trying to think, the name of it was…
TL: Don and Ruth Thompson owned what?
MLL: Cape Cod House.
AH: The Cape Cod House. Tell us about that. What was that like?
MLL: And Petar’s.
AH: Do you remember what they were like inside or the sorts of things they were known for?
MLL: Well, Cape Cod was known for their seafood and Petar’s…
TL: …Was not known for their food. It had horrible food.
MLL: But we did a lot of entertaining.
TL: They were personal friends with… we went to their homes. They came here for dinner.
AH: Uh-huh. That’s nice.
TL: What did Dad do in Pleasant Hill? What did he start? With Ben Hardinger? The Park and Recreation?
MLL: Oh yeah. My husband started the Park and Recreation in Pleasant Hill.
TL: And what did you start at the same time that you just got honored for?
MLL: Oh, Pleasant Hill Library.
TL: …Foundation.
MLL: Foundation, yeah.
AH: So, this home is in Lafayette but you’re so close to Pleasant Hill, is that right?
TL: This is county. So, this part of Wither’s county, this part of Wither’s city. And Pleasant Hill Road is the city of Pleasant Hill.
AH: Oh. So you probably did a lot of your shopping over in Pleasant Hill because it’s so close, huh?
MLL: I guess.
TL: We grew up in Gregory Gardens, half a block from the Poynette’s Market, but then when we moved here, you started shopping at Safeway in Oak Park, right? Because Petrini’s wasn’t here yet.
MLL: No, that’s true.
TL: The Park N’ Shop, I mean, wasn’t here yet. Is it okay that I do this?
AH: It’s fine.
TL: They did a lot of community work and she was very instrumental with the, yeah, what was it called, across from DVC? The therapy place? Mt. Diablo Therapy Center?
MLL: I had forgotten that, yeah.
TL: In the 1950’s she was very instrumental and did a lot of volunteer work. She raised probably a couple million dollars for Catholic Charities over the years, and then when the last one went to college, she confessed to us that she had never finished high school. She went to Presentation High School in San Fransisco. Who was your best friend at Presentation?
MLL: Jean Stinson.
TL: Your best friend, Lana.
MLL: Lana Turner.
TL: And then in the summer of their sophomore year they plucked each other’s eyebrows out, and then Lana left, and then she quit… her family moved from San Francisco to San Mateo, she says, “I’m not going back to school,” so she told us, we thought she had graduated, and she went back to school, and they said, “You can just get the GED,” she says, “No, I want to be in the classroom.”
AH: How old was she?
TL: How old were you? 59? Yeah, 59.
MLL: So, at 59 you got your high school diploma?
TL: Diploma, in the classroom. She was valedictorian. And then she went to work, and didn’t really like what she was doing, and she thought, I’ve raised all this money for Catholic Charities, so she got a job at Catholic Charities. Started when she was 72, she ran the books on a computer, and how old were you when you stopped working full time?
MLL: 86.
AH: Way to go!
TL: Commuting into not a good part of Oakland every day. She would get there early to wake the homeless up in the door, get them coffee and get them out of the way so the other workers could… well, we weren’t told that.
AH: Well, they need breakfast too, the homeless. There are a lot of homeless in Oakland.
MLL: I’ve always been active in the…
TL: Social justice.
MLL: Yeah, that’s for sure.
TL: So, my parents were part of a group of twenty families that started Christ the King Church on Gregory Lane.
AH: I’m gonna do this, I’m gonna pivot, ‘cause you should be in it too.
TL: And they were called the Tent People, because they bought the land and put up a huge tent to worship in for two years while the church was being built, so she—and this is so interesting—she said her best friend first was Jean Stinson, they grew up in San Francisco going to school together, and then they’re doing this church in Pleasant Hill, painting the old farmhouse, she looks over and there’s Jean Stinson, and her best friend lives two blacks away. And they’re both… well, she’s a year older than Jean.
AH: Is Jean still alive?
TL: Yeah, she still lives two blocks away.
AH: And you’ve known her since high school?
MLL: Yes
AH: Wow. Now what is your secret to longevity? Staying active?
MLL: Yes, stay active.
TL: How long do you work out every day? An hour every day? You do a half an hour on the recumbent…
MLL: Yeah, on the recumbent cross trainer. I do that 30 minutes a day.
TL: And what else do you do?
MLL: I do hand exercises and…
TL: Balance exercises?
MLL: Oh yeah, right. Sink balance it’s called. I stand in front of the sink and hold on and then I do all these different exercises. You have to keep active.
TL: What do you do with that book? Do you write every day? Half a page?
MLL: Yeah.
AH: Beautiful. What are your favorite things to write about? Beautiful handwriting.
TL: Catholic girls’ school.
AH: See, they don’t teach that anymore. The kids today, you can’t read their writing, you know?
TL: After you… you didn’t retire, you quit, what did you do at the elementary schools, like Daniel’s school and the Amy’s Kids school? What did you do with the kids with reading?
MML: With reading?
TL: You were one on one with kids who were having trouble reading?
MML: Oh yeah, I forgot about that.
TL: So, you volunteered at 85, still driving.
AH: How old were you when you were no longer driving a car?
TL: 93. Why did you stop driving? Because people scared you?
MLL: Yeah, I’m a good driver…
TL: She was a really good driver, but then she said, “People are scaring me too much,” I go, “Mom, they scare me.”
AH: They go fast. Too fast.
TL: She went real fast too.
AH: Let’s see, what else can we ask her about history? I’ve got these questions here…
TL: Okay, so, oh yeah, tell her about the other restaurant, The Fashion Plate.
MLL: Was that the name of it?
TL: Yeah, it’s where Metro is now. By the way, I’m the sole investor of Metro. I do most of the… I do the patio and a lot of the work there. So that was the fashion plate and Jim Sherry had fashion shows for the ladies, they’d sit at their tables and the models would walk… I mean, it was too much for Lafayette, and Dad was a good friend of Russ Bruzzone’s, and the Panfili’s with the Lafayette Seafood Grotto, you guys used to go and get crabs?
MLL: Yes, we liked to eat.
TL: She knew Gloria Duffy who just died, and, oh yeah, E.G. Craig, right?
MLL: He designed our first deck.
TL: Right, right. He was a big architect. So my dad knew the developers and all that because after he was done with Pleasant Hill Park and Recreation District Ward he got appointed to the county planning commission, and he had part of Pleasant Hill and about half of Lafayette, so he knew everybody, and they would all gather at Petar’s Bar, and decide what the county was going to look like, so he was part of the whole BART thing, I remember going over in Concord when Lyndon Johnson landed in a helicopter to do that whole TNT thing for BART and my dad was up on the stage and met the president and all that.
AH: Let me ask you something, Tim, in the sixties, there was a highway that was gonna run right through—two highways—right through Lafayette, right through where the community center is now, cloverleaf, do you remember that? And I guess BART had something to do with that not happening…
TL: And then the other one was, what do they call it, “wild something”, where the Shakespeare theater is in Orinda, across from there, that was supposed to go through to Hayward, and then do you know Boulevard Way in Walnut Creek? Well anyway, it comes off of Mt. Diablo Blvd., or Mt. Diablo Blvd. goes up the freeway to Lafayette, if you turn left and go all the way around to Rossmoor, and the first two blocks are four lanes, then it goes down to two little country road lanes, that was another highway that was going to go through Burton Valley. Luckily, they all got halted.
AH: Luckily. Can you imagine how much that would have changed things? Let’s see here, what else? Do you enjoy the Lafayette Reservoir? Did you used to walk around…?
TL: I just asked her that the other day, she said she never did. She walked a lot. She’s always been really active physically, but she tended to walk the trail because it was all flat. Yeah, you never walked the reservoir, right?
MLL: I did with friends a couple of times but not as a regular thing. I walked in neighborhoods, I walked in Larkey Park…
AH: Did you have any hobbies that you liked to do, like knitting or anything with your hands, painting or cooking?
TL: What was the business you had? Making baby comforters?
MLL: Oh yeah. I always did a lot of sewing.
TL: Hand sewn. She made these little bassinet comforters for new grandkids, and then friends kept asking her, so she started a little company, and she had a little portfolio and did it for everybody.
MLL: I’ve always been involved in a lot of things and do a lot of reading. I read a couple of books a week.
AH: Wow.
MLL: Well, I can’t… I‘m not active.
AH: Well, it sounds like you’re keeping up with being active with exercise, which is great. What types of things do you like to read about?
MLL: Everything. I like mystery stories and…
TL: Courtroom?
MLL: Yeah, definitely. Tim and I trade off books and he picks up a lot of books…
TL: From the corner bookstore at the library.
MLL: So, he gets the books and we both read a lot…
TL: And then I bring them back to the bookstore.
MLL: That’s great, that’s great. Keeps your mind active, right?
MLL: I probably read a variety of books but a lot of… what did you call them, mystery books?
TL: So, when you came here to this area from San Francisco and dad used to come out from the city for picnics, and he would take the ferry, and I guess what’s called the trolley, but you didn’t, do you know when the first time was that you came to this area? Her mother graduated from City College of Arts and Crafts in the early 1900’s, came from San Francisco, anyway, but besides that, do you remember coming out here to this area? This side of the tunnel?
MLL: I don’t remember when we started…
MLL: No, you. Dad did, did you come out this way?
AH: From San Francisco? It was later?
TL: My Dad came out before the tunnel opened. So, you only came out after the Caldecott Tunnel was opened.
MLL: Yeah, right.
AH: Do you remember your first experiences going through that tunnel? The big tunnel under the hill, the Caldecott?
MLL: You had to go fast.
TL: Meaning 40 (MPH).
AH: Because it was scary? Was it scary to go through in the earlier days of that tunnel?
TL: Nobody was used to a tunnel that long. So, you came out, so you guys would eat at… just before the freeway, you guys would come out and go through Orinda and eat sometimes at the… what’s the restaurant in Orinda that the Snows owned? Casa Orinda.
AH: Is that still there?
TL: Oh yeah. The Snow family. Tony Snow owned it.
MLL: Oh, I forgot about that.
TL: They were all good friends too because my dad supplied the liquor to the whole place.
AH: Now was there a place with a magician on Tunnel Strip, a restaurant? Maybe that was before you got here.
TL: No, it wasn’t. There was… so, when you come through Orinda and where the freeway is on that side was Tunnel Road and then you dipped down and where Orchard Nursery is now, what was that, EL Nino Ranch Road and that’s where Petar had his first restaurant. He got together with a guy… Petar was a valet at Bombo’s 365 Club, and then we can’t remember what that guy’s name who his partner was because you guys knew him really well, and he told Petar, “Hey, there’s gonna be a lot of money on that side”, so they bought that place, and then that partnership split up, and Pete opened the one downtown, not where it is now.
AH: What else can we ask your mom? Oh, we didn’t really say how many grandchildren or great-grandchildren for the camera.
TL: How many kids do you have?
MLL: Seven.
TL: How many grandchildren?
MLL: Nineteen.
TL: How many great-grandchildren? 36?
MLL: Is that what it is now? I have a hard time keeping track of all the kids.
TL: And how many great-great-grandchildren?
MLL: Three.
AH: Now do you get together for the holiday and do people come and see you? Do they live around here? Some of your children?
MLL: The holidays? We have a standing engagement Christmas morning and all of them come here, and the girls baked.
AH: Nice. That must be fun.
TL: But we don’t do presents anymore. Too many.
MLL: No, we stopped doing presents.
AH: Too many.
MLL: I think we’ve covered a few years.
AH: I think so.
TL: When you used to drive down Tunnel Road, do you remember all the hills in downtown?
MLL: Oh yeah, they were pretty large hills.
AH: Did they just flatten it out?
TL: Well, where Russ Bruzzone… that was a huge hill, and they had taken part of it off to make the freeway, but then right below, he bought the hill, and people said it was a stupid move because you can’t build on it, right? So, he got that through Dad at the planning commission, probably through some drinks at Petar’s, and approved the biggest shopping center around.
AH: Safeway?
TL: That whole shopping center. He didn’t have Safeway, he has everything else, and he bought two big new bulldozers and hired two young guys that wanted to go into business, and he said, “You take my hill down and you can keep the bulldozers”, so they got dump trucks and took that entire hill down, and they took all of the dirt out to what is called Four Corners in Concord where Orchard Supply used to be and dumped all the dirt onto that huge lot, and then he built a smaller rendition of his shopping center here, and then next to it…
AH: What was his name?
TL: Russ Bruzzone. The family still owns it. She’s still alive, and then they did the first street, has always been there, then they did those entrances to the freeway, and the post office is right there where the bank is, and next to that was another huge hill, and Peter Bedford bought that, and he didn’t take it all the way to the ground like Russ did, but he put his office and other offices out there. But there were hills all along Lafayette.
MLL: That’s for sure.
AH: Did the Park, you know the Park Plaza, the movie theater, did you ever go see movies there?
MLL: Oh yes.
TL: A lot. It’s about to reopen in a couple of years. They bought it back, it’s gonna reopen in a couple of years. The Park Theater. But you and Dad used to go there.
AH: To the movies?
TL: Yeah. Wednesday night was a dollar, even in the sixties. Sixties and seventies.
ML: Oh my gosh, I’d forgotten that.
AH: Did you enjoy the movies because you knew Lana Turner? Did you used to go to the movies a lot?
MLL: Actually, we did.
AH: That was the golden age of moviemaking, all through when you were in your twenties and thirties…
TL: You never saw her again. Different lives.
MLL: Her name wasn’t Lana Turner, she was Judy something, but when they had the world’s fair on Treasure Island, they had the big bands, and Lana Turner…
TL: She appeared with them? They used to go all the time because they lived in the city, they went all the time to the Fairmont, everything, they loved dancing, all the big bands.
AH: Big dancer.
MLL: Benny Goodman.
TL: But do you know the Lafayette Town Hall, the big old barn downtown where they do the drama? You guys never… they used to have dances and stuff there, you guys would never come out for that, right? Too far?
MLL: No.
TL: The train used to run late on Saturday night to bring people back to Oakland.
AH: So, have you lived in Lafayette from your childhood?
TL: No, they came out in 1950, bought one of the first houses in the huge new development called Gregory Gardens in Pleasant Hill, part of it was on drained swampland, but it was built because they had the G.I. Bill so everybody in our neighborhood knew Dad was a vet, every single person. About half catholic, so that meant five kids or more, the other half Protestant, which meant one or two kids, we all went to public schools, well, not all of us, all the older ones went to public school, and then by high school, the boys went to St. Mary’s College High School in Berkeley, which was an all-boys school, and the girls either, the oldest ones went one year to Holy Names, and then the others by that time Carondelet and De La Salle were open, so like the third youngest, she was the first graduating class of Carondelet, and then the other two went there.
AH: Now, can you name your sisters and brothers?
TL: Oh, yeah. I can name my grandkids, I cannot name my great grandkids, except my own granddaughter and a couple of others, there is just too many. But she writes a card to every one of them.
AH: Why don’t we go through the name of her children? Do you want to do that?
TL: No, she can do it. What are your kids’ names?
MLL: Bill is William Michael.
TL: How old will he be in February?
MLL: He’ll be 80.
TL: And then what’s the next one?
MLL: Kathleen.
TL: The next one?
MLL: Let’s see, Bill, Kathy, Jim, Tim, Terry, Patty Jean.
TL: And no need to name the grandkids or the great grandkids. There’s just too many.
MLL: I probably know the names but…
TL: I don’t. I know you do, but too many.
AH: Well, we’re at the half hour mark, can you think of any else that we haven’t covered?
TL: So what did you guys do with politics? You and Dad?
MLL: Well, Dad was always more active than I was, ‘cause I was busy with the kids,
TL: He was real high up in the Democratic Party. He was on Governor Pat. Brown’s Kitchen Cabinet, Congressman Jerry Waldy’s Kitchen cabinet, that was all the guys behind the scenes planning and raising money, but none of them ever ran for office.
AH: When did your father pass away?
TL: 19… 2000. Dad died in 2000. And how long were you married? You and Dad? 63 years?
MLL: Yeah, right.
AH: Where did you have your wedding? San Francisco?
MLL: St. Dominic’s.
AH: Is that in San Francisco?
MLL: In San Francisco.
AH: I’ll bet you were a beautiful bride. Maybe we can take some pictures of…
TL: Oh, we have. She has her baby book from 1920. I’ll go get it. I should have brought it out.
AH: How fun. What advice would you give to young people today about how to live a good life?
MLL: Be active. That’s the main thing, be active. Fortunately, my kids were all good about participating in politics and…
TL: Community service. So, in the back there’s a bunch of articles in newspapers about her wedding and the honeymoon and all that. Her family was pretty well known in the peninsula.
AH: Wow, beautiful. That’s a lovely dress.
TL: Go ahead and turn it, mom. That’s their honeymoon in Carmel. So, this is the June after Pearl Harbor.
AH: Was your Dad in the service?
TL: Was this after Pearl Harbor? So, you guys went on your honeymoon knowing when you got back, he would have his orders, right? So, you went to Carmel…
MLL: For two weeks.
TL: And this was a little beach cottage they rented, and Mom? Tell them about the soldiers on the beach.
MLL: Yeah, that was something ‘cause you know that was after Pearl Harbor, and we went to Carmel and we would go to the beach every day, and one day we were smooching, and we looked and in back of us the soldier was…
TL: Watching, but there was barbed wire on the beach too, right? Because they thought the Japanese would attack California.
AH: All right. Wow, that must have been weird.
TL: There’s a story on their honeymoon.
AH: I’ll take some pictures of these. Oh, what’s that, is that the guest list?
TL: That’s the guest list. I’m sure nobody is still alive. This is hers, I said Catholic Girls’ School. So yeah, all this stuff in the papers.
AH: How fun.
TL: And then this is her actual baby book. We’ve never seen it, but her mom, who dies at 99 ½, had kept it, and when she was going through her stuff, she goes, “Oh, look what I found!”
AH: Your baby book.
TL: Hundred- and three-year-old hair. So, it’s just the usual, but then her mom in the back did these up until she’s thirteen.
AH: Does she want to talk about any of these?
TL: Probably, sure. You wanna tell about this? Tell her about this. Tell me about that.
MLL: That’s when I went to dancing school.
TL: In San Fransisco. She lived on Geary in a house her grandpa built, right across from where Kaiser is now. In the house on Geary that you lived in with Grandpa, what was across the street? Across Geary?
MML: A big cemetery.
TL: That you guys used to play in? What’s it now? What’s there now?
MML: Kaiser.
AH: What did they do with the bodies?
TL: There were cemeteries all over San Francsico. They would take the bones and… that’s how Colma, the burial grounds, started. It was because of, not because people wanted to be buried there, but because they buried all the bones there so ancestors… “I wanna be by Grandpa” so they’d start burying them there.
AH: I’ll take some pictures of those.
TL: So, who’s that?
MML: That’s Dick and me.
TL: Your brother. And that’s Pat. So, your Mom was born in Fresno, and her family came from Michigan. To Fresno. But before that, they’ve been here since the early 1700’s, right? On the East Coast? She had a great-great-great-whatever uncle that was the first governor of Massachusetts, I think? Yeah, so they go back almost forever.
AH: And you?
TL: Yeah. My sisters just found this out because everybody did the DNA thing and they go, “Damn, if we knew that, we could have gotten Daughters of the American Revolution scholarships”. We didn’t know.
AH: Who knew? Well, I should probably stop the interview and I’ll take some pictures and if you want to talk more, we can do that, but thank you so much. It was really fun.
MML: Well, thank you, you brought back a lot of memories.
TL: I always tell you, the files are all in there, you just have to download them.
AH: Yeah, it’s important.
TL: To keep it up. Well, that’s part of why I have her write half a page every day, just like… because if she doesn’t do this, she says it’ll go away. She works out more than her seven kids, probably more than her grandkids because she works out rigorously an hour every day. And she says we all still have a choice, if I stopped, it would be gone. I can’t get it back.
AH: There you go. I’m gonna go home and work out. Thank you very much, it’s been very inspirational to speak with you today.
MML: Well, thank you, I like all the memories that it brought up.
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